Upgrade To The Next Generation Mobile App Analytics Platform

Spring is coming right around the corner and it's never a bad idea to get a head start on your spring cleaning! The same goes for your mobile app analytics solution. Have you switched over to our new Mobile App Analytics Platform (v2) yet? The benefits are numerous:

A more powerful mobile SDK

• We are providing a new mobile app analytics solution, solving the problem that there is currently no single repository to understand end-to-end value of mobile app users. This is supported by a more powerful mobile SDK (v2.0) that is easy to implement.

“One stop shop” for app measurement

• Understanding app performance holistically through acquisition, engagement and outcome is critical to improve mobile app results, optimize user engagement and increase revenue generated. Our new reports show the entire lifecycle. 

Improve ROI and engagement

• App developers and brands can make better, more comprehensive data-driven decisions for mobile investments with better reports. For example, marketers can optimize their mobile programs to improve ROI and app developers can improve in-app engagement.  

Though we call it “Version 2,” the truth is that we didn’t just “upgrade” our original platform. We decided to rebuild the whole thing from scratch. Our team at Google Analytics has reimagined mobile app analytics and have created a brand new experience tailored specifically for mobile app developers, providing reports on the data you care most about, in the language you understand. In addition, we also completely rebuilt our Android and iOS SDKs to be even more lightweight, efficient, and faster.

We’re continuing to build and add features to this platform all the time. So if you haven’t migrated yet, now is the perfect time to do it and find out exactly what you're missing out on. 

To make it easy to migrate, we’ve put together a Migration Guide for Android and iOS to help you make the move.

And if you’re new to Mobile App Analytics, check out the Getting Started Guide for Android or iOS to get your app up and running with Google Analytics in minutes.

Posted by Calvin Lee, Google Analytics Team

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Make the most of your holiday gifts and time at home with Google Drive

Chances are that many of you lucky readers will be unwrapping new computers, mobile phones, and tablets this holiday season. Here are a few quick tips on how you can smoothly transition all of your stuff from old devices to new ones using Google Drive.

For laptops & desktops 
First, you’ll want to get all your files from your old computer into Google Drive. To do this, download Drive for Mac or PC on your existing computer. To upload your files to Drive, simply drag-and-drop all your files and folders (up to 5GB free) into the new Drive folder on your desktop. Then you’ll be able to access everything on the web from any computer, including your new one. Or you can download Drive again on your new computer to sync your files and automatically store them on your new computer.

For mobile phones & tablets
Upload all of the photos and videos on your old device with the Drive mobile app for Android or iOS. Install the Drive mobile app on your new device and all your stuff will be there -- and also available to you on the web from any device.

More holiday tips & tricks 
For those of you planning to do any holiday cooking, here are a few other ways Drive can help you in the next few weeks:

• Scan or snap a photo of a classic family holiday recipe and upload it to Drive for safe keeping and sharing. 
• Search for recipes that you’ve already stored in Drive. You can even search for keywords inside PDFs and photos. 
• Jot down a new delicious recipe right from the kitchen with Docs in the Drive mobile app for Android and iOS. 
• Use Sheets for your grocery shopping list. Create it on your computer at home, then pull it up on your phone at the grocery store and cross of items as you go. 
• Create a quick form to invite friends to your holiday get together and figure out who’s coming, what they’re bringing, etc. 

Happy holidays!

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager

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Local success stories: Qué Tiempo grows by 30% by going mobile

The increase in smartphone sales and mobile traffic makes it more important every day for web publishers to build a mobile strategy for their businesses. Nevertheless, only 1 out of 10 AdSense publishers has a mobile-friendly version of their site. To encourage other publishers to go mobile, Ángel Hernández and Manuel Lebrón, owners of Qué Tiempo, shared their experience with us.

Qué Tiempo is a Spanish site that displays the weather forecast globally. Ángel and Manuel became AdSense publishers in 2007 and over the years, thanks to investing in their content, optimizing their ads and growing their traffic, they’ve been able to build a team of more than 20 employees and invest in new ventures.

Back in 2008, they could already see through Google Analytics that the traffic coming from mobile devices was growing, so they decided to develop quetiempo.es/mobile in-house.

Their mobile traffic has successfully grown by 20% over the last two years. New users are arriving to the mobile-friendly version of their site from mobile devices, while the desktop version is experiencing a 10% year over year growth. This shows that mobile traffic is additional, not substitutional, and mobile usage is complementary to desktop.

Thanks to the increase in their mobile traffic, together with a successful implementation of their ads, Qué Tiempo saw their daily earnings grow by 30%. The CTR of their mobile leaderboard 320x50 now doubles the CTR on their desktop ads. In addition, the CPC of their mobile ads is 100% higher than the CPC of the desktop site.

Most of Qué Tiempo’s efforts are now focused on improving their mobile site with features like geotargeting, which makes it possible to deliver accurate location-specific weather forecasts.  

“We encourage other publishers to build a mobile-friendly site, not only because they’ll quickly see their revenue grow thanks to the available Google AdSense mobile formats, but also because the future of your online business depends on your mobile strategy, a market with infinite possibilities.”

Posted by Alicia Escriba - Inside AdSense team

This information is current as of December 18th, 2012.

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Edit spreadsheets on the go with the Drive mobile app

You’re making your list, you’re checking it twice—and now you can do it from anywhere.

Just in time for this year’s holiday season, you can edit Google Sheets on your mobile device, just like you can with Google Docs. From the Drive app on your iPhone, iPad or Android device, you can create a new spreadsheet or edit an existing one. You can switch fonts, resize columns, sort data, and more. And just like on your computer, you’ll be able to see other people’s edits in real time as they’re made.

Beyond spreadsheets, you may notice a few other tweaks to the Drive app, including better text formatting when you copy and paste in a Google document. And if you’re using an Android device, you can now edit text within tables in documents and add a shortcut on the homescreen of your device to any specific file in Drive.

Whether it’s holiday recipes, shopping lists, or just your family budget, the Drive app on your mobile device makes it easy to get stuff done wherever you are.

Get the Google Drive app today from Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Posted by Shrikant Shanbhag, Software Engineer

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HiPenpal.com makes more than 50% of AdSense revenue through mobile

HiPenpal.com is an international penpal website that facilitates the exchange of messages between people from different countries across all ages. Since its inception in 2006, HiPenpal.com, a Korea based company, has grown its membership base to 180,000 and has gained popularity in the United States and Japan.

Today, we’re going to highlight HiPenpal.com’s mobile journey, which has resulted in more than 50% of their total AdSense revenue coming from their mobile site.

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You’ve been a publisher with AdSense since 2006. How did you find out about AdSense and what has your experience been to date?

I got to know about AdSense when I was web-surfing through foreign websites. At that time, I managed various websites but because I did not have an ad sales team, I had a hard time with ad orders. However, with the help of AdSense, I no longer had to worry about this. I didn’t have to manage orders and still received good quality ads through AdSense which allowed me to focus on content management. The biggest advantage with AdSense, is that the ads are highly relevant to users, which has resulted in high user engagement and high earnings. All of my businesses depend on Google AdSense for revenue.  I’m very satisfied with the service and revenue that AdSense has been able to provide because it has replaced the need for an expensive sales force.

When did you first build your mobile site and how has this affected traffic and user satisfaction for HiPenpal.com?

In the 2008, I revamped HiPenpal.com and created a mobile site along with it. At that time, since most users had feature phones, the site was not actively used. However, since 2009, with the spread of smartphones, the usage of the mobile site has been steadily increasing. Currently, 40% of our total traffic is accessing our mobile site and the users are extremely satisfied with it.

What things did you consider when building the mobile site and what type of investment was needed to make this happen?

In the 2008, I didn’t know much about mobile web development, so building the initial site took about six months. I wanted to make sure that the site displayed perfectly across all mobile phones and browsers, so I focused heavily on the structure of the site. There are cases when your site displays perfectly on one type of mobile device, but is distorted on another. In order to prevent this, I used a mobile web emulator or browser plug-in to perform quality checks during the development of the mobile site. Before launch, I checked the mobile site on the actual mobile devices. I invested in several devices with different operating systems in order to perform bug fixes and improve quality.

Additionally, I tried to simplify the navigational tree structure, so that people could easily access the desired pages with a simple operation. Most importantly, I was able to attract more mobile traffic by adding mobile-specific content.

How did users respond to ads on your mobile site?

We implemented mobile ads in 2008 and then upgraded to the smartphone-specific ad unit in 2009, when it was first launched. The 300x250 medium rectangle is positioned towards the bottom of the page, so that it will not distract from content engagement. On the other hand, the 320x50 mobile banner is posted on the top of the page, so that it would attract more attention.

Because smartphone ad units are now integrated with general AdSense for content (AFC), AdSense implementation has become more convenient.

We have not received any feedback about the mobile ads on the site, which I’m guessing means that users are not being inconvenienced by this implementation. Our users are very vocal when they find that the ads are distracting to the use of the site.

How does mobile revenue compare to your overall monetization?

Mobile revenue is increasing proportionally to the growth of mobile users. Currently, 40% of of total traffic (over 50% including tablet impressions) is coming from smartphones and resulting in over 50% of total revenue.

The 300x250 medium rectangle is generating the majority of revenue today, due to its high user engagement. Initially, I hesitated in implementing this ad unit, due to its large size, but now highly recommend it to other publishers. Since December 2009, the monthly revenue has increased about 100 times.

What advice do you have for publishers who have concerns about implementing mobile ads?

I believe that publishers who have concerns about mobile ads are actually hesitating about managing a mobile web site. However, mobile is a technology that cannot be ignored, more and more users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices instead of the PC. In my opinion, ignoring mobile is the same as ignoring half of the users. Furthermore, ignoring mobile web ads is the same as throwing out half of your revenue. If you don’t want to miss out on half of your revenue opportunity, do not hesitate. I encourage you to start from today.


Posted by Junho Jung, Publisher Relations Specialist

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A Glimpse Into Mobile Measurement and Apps Today and Tomorrow

We recently teamed up with ClickZ to learn how marketers around the world are approaching mobile marketing and measurement, and where it’s headed next. We hope these stats will provide useful context for your planning in the coming year. Here are some of the key takeaways:

Mobile is now an important part of the integrated marketing mix

Mobile is no longer an add-on to a campaign, and for many it’s increasingly becoming a central focus.

• 87% of marketers are planning to increase emphasis on mobile during 2013, and belief in the power of mobile is rapidly growing stronger.
• Marketers have a broad mix of mobile tactics planned in the next year: 
• 52% plan to create a mobile- or tablet-optimized website
• 48% plan to increase engagement in mobile advertising 
• 41% hope to develop a mobile app
• 39% are planning to market a mobile app

For many, mobile measurement is still new territory

• More than half (59%) of marketers consider themselves either novice or inexperienced when it comes to measuring mobile. This presents an opportunity for organizations to invest in training and education today to stay ahead of the curve tomorrow.
• 58% of marketers are currently accountable for mobile metrics, and more than one-third are already sharing internal dashboards to show mobile marketing results.

Mobile measurement unlocks new opportunities

• 53% of marketers who analyzed their mobile metrics say there is a lot of untapped opportunity and plan to increase their mobile spending.
• Tools, technologies and talent are in demand: 68% of marketers plan to increase technology investment and ad spend, and 32% plan to focus more in talent.

A deeper look at mobile app measurement

Here’s a look at the mobile app-related metrics that marketers say matter the most to them:

As shown above, marketers are interested in measuring the full app lifecycle, which we’re excited to see as our new Mobile App Analytics covers a majority of the desired metrics marketers are seeking.

The opportunity for marketers

This research shows the opportunity that mobile offers app developers and marketers to reach consumers on the go. Effective measurement across mobile sites, ads and apps will help marketers create winning strategies. Mobile’s role in marketing is becoming a central part of integrated campaigns and will only continue to grow. We know that marketers want simple tools that help them seamlessly integrate mobile into their marketing and measurement, and we’re working hard to create robust tools to help. 

Posted by Adam Singer, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

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Announcing the Learn with Google webinar series for publishers

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Learn with Google series to help our publishers make the most from the web.  We’ll be hosting two upcoming webinars as part of our Learn with Google program:  

Google+ for publishers: Grow and engage your audience with Google+
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 12:00pm PT / 3:00pm ET

Join us for a discussion on how social media is impacting online publishers and how Google thinks about social. We'll also cover how you can grow and engage your audience on the web and mobile with Google+ using Google+ pages, the +1 button, Hangouts, and Authorship.

Register Here

Navigating Google's Mobile Ads Ecosystem
Wednesday, November 28, at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET

Ever wonder who the buyers are in Google's mobile ads ecosystem and how their ads reach your inventory? Join us to learn the inner workings of Google's mobile ads ecosystem, including an overview of Google demand sources and the different channels advertisers can use buy your mobile inventory.

Register Here

Visit the webinar page for more information on these two events and to register. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding the Learn with Google webinar calendar to your own Google calendar.

We look forward to hosting many more Learn with Google webinars for our publishers.

Posted by Faith Rosen, Product Marketing Manager

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Mobile App Analytics Updates And Public Beta Launch

With ever-expanding mobile application marketplaces (more than 600,000 apps on Google Play at the time of writing) and a shift in focus to mobile (more than 80 percent of marketers are planning to increase emphasis in mobile initiatives in 2013, according to recent research we conducted with ClickZ) measuring mobile is more important now than ever. With this, we are excited to be moving Google Analytics Mobile App Analytics (initially launched at I/O) out of closed and into open beta. We’ve listened to feedback from more than 5,000 mobile app developers during the closed beta, improved the product, and are now making it available to all developers and marketers. 

In addition to moving into public beta, there are some other exciting updates:

A New Sign-up Flow for all GA users

With the induction of mobile app analytics into the family of digital analytics at GA, we’ve introduced a new and improved sign-up flow that you will see whenever you setup a new entity on GA. In just 3 clicks, you’ll be able to set up your app analytics account, download the SDK, and be well on the way to tracking key metrics and finding valuable insights using our features.

New sign-up flow for Google Analytics

More powerful SDK for both Android and iOS, yet really easy to implement

The mobile app analytics solution is made possible with our new Android and iOS SDKs which have been rebuilt from scratch. They are lightweight, powerful, and super easy to implement. The majority of the mobile app reports are available out of the box after less than 5 minutes of work implementing our new SDK (check out our developer guides for more details).

New App Version Report

Find out about the long-tail of your old app versions. This report gives answers to questions such as:

• How quickly are users migrating to the latest version of my app?
• What’s the cannibalization effect among my multiple versions?
• How many users would be affected if I deprecated an early version of my app?

App Versions report in Mobile App Analytics

A first-class customizable structure called “Custom Dimensions” 

For those of you who are savvy users of “Custom Variables,” consider this feature the next-generation Custom Variables: 

• You can create your own dimensions by which to segment your hits in every standard or custom GA report.
• Leverage your own business and customer data as custom dimension values to enable new possibilities for analysis and reporting.
• Naming and scoping of Custom Dimensions can be configured through the administration UI - no retagging needed!

(Note: we are rolling out Custom Dimensions to everyone over the next few weeks)

Other improvements include: more accurate & up-to-date mobile device library, armv7s ( iOS6) support, support for social interaction tracking, a more accurate Google Play conversion report and more.

With this big step forward for Mobile App Analytics, we still have many more exciting features on the way and planned for the future that will add to the power and functionality of the platform. Look forward to improved integration with other Google properties like Google Play as well as brand-new reports that will provide a better understanding of your user acquisition, engagement, and outcome models.

We hope that our product will give app developers and advertisers a better picture of users’ interactions as well as the end-to-end value of your mobile app. And in the long run, make mobile apps more beautiful and engaging experience for all users.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by JiaJing Wang, Google Analytics Team

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Mobile revenue from AdSense enables Ultimoprezzo to invest in growth

Italian site Ultimoprezzo.com provides a unique service to online consumers. It supplies information on stores and their opening hours, as well as their best prices for smartphones, TVs, tablets, laptops and other consumer electronics products.

As a supplier of free services, Ultimoprezzo needs to be savvy about its strategy for generating revenue. AdSense provides a straightforward solution.

“The Google AdSense program is the ideal way for us to monetize our publishing efforts,” explains founder and CEO Alberto Giacobone. He says Google AdSense not only provides Ultimoprezzo’s users with relevant and interesting advertising information, but also provides its advertisers cost-effective ad placements since Ultimoprezzo doesn’t need to maintain a sales network.

Globally, smartphone usage is on the rise. In Italy alone, 69% of smartphone owners never leave the house without carrying their device and 82% use their smartphone to perform research on a product or service. “Certainly, the numbers speak for themselves,” Alberto affirms. “In Italy and abroad, we are increasingly in a ‘post- PC’ era where smartphones and tablets accompany us at all times and everywhere, often even while we are doing other things.”

Very early on in Ultimoprezzo’s development, Alberto’s team perceived an opportunity in the mobile space. An internal team developed Ultimoprezzo’s mobile-optimized website, while a special agency developed applications for iOS and Android.

So has the company seen an uplift in mobile traffic? “The trend is clear,” says Alberto. “Mobile traffic is growing and is now already more than 15% of our total traffic. And this is not only down to the growing popularity of smartphones which cost less than $100; what we notice is that the users are getting better at exploiting the technological tool at their disposal more and more frequently.” With Ultimoprezzo’s non-mobile traffic volumes booming as well, by the end of 2012 Alberto estimates mobile will account for one-third of the company’s total traffic.

AdSense provides a way for Ultimoprezzo to monetize its content across devices. As new digital platforms emerge, AdSense makes new revenue streams available. “The AdSense program has allowed us to invest in the growth – both in terms of quantity and quality – of the services to our visitors, so we can keep them free always. ”

This information is current as of October 23rd, 2012.

Posted by Cristina Miscimarra - Inside AdSense Team

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Join our upcoming Mobile Q&A sessions on Google+

As part of our ongoing GoMo initiative, we’re hosting weekly "Mobile Q&A Sessions" for the month of October every Tuesday at 4pm GMT+1 / 8am PT on our AdSense +page. To learn more about going mobile or monetizing your mobile sites and apps, please drop by and join our interactive mobile hangouts. We’ll be answering frequently asked mobile-related questions and helping publishers with mobile-related issues.

To join the Mobile Q&A Hangout sessions, follow these steps:

1. Create a Google+ account, if you don't already have one.
2. Visit the AdSense +page and look for the weekly “Mobile Q&A Sessions” event.
3. Let us know if you are planning to attend through the ‘Are you going?’ drop-down menu.
4. Once the Hangout starts, you’ll receive a notification in the Google bar.
5. Join the Hangout and ask your mobile-related questions.
6. The sessions will be regular Hangouts where up to 9 people can join at a time. If the Hangout is full, keep checking back in, as people will drop in and out as their questions are answered.
7. Please keep in mind that these sessions will be mobile-focused, so we’ll only be answering mobile-related questions.

We look forward to hanging out with you soon.

Posted by Dairine Kennedy - Mobile Team

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